Does It Feel Like Nothing Changed At All
by Lioness's Heart
Summary: He realizes how misguided going along with Mary's plan was now. He wants to curse her and he wants to hate her, but he cannot bring himself to do either. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: As always - not my sandbox.**

**I wrote this a few weeks ago, on the tail end of watching most of the first season of the show. I absolutely love Bash still and everything that happened to him in the middle of the season makes me sad for him. This is the result of that. The title is from Things We Lost In The Fire by Bastille.  
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If he was not already so angry with his father and Francis he might have decided to just let it be. When the guards Francis sent with him try to kill him he is only angrier.

Bash knows that being angry will not help him. He also knows that killing the guards – even in self-defense – looks bad. To some extent he does not care. He is tired of people trying to kill him. He is tired of being a pawn in a game that he was never meant to play.

He realizes how misguided going along with Mary's plan was now. He wants to curse her and he wants to hate her, but he cannot bring himself to do either. What he hates is that she used him and he let her. He hates knowing that he was just a means to save his brother and she did not really love him at all in the first place. (She says she did and he wants to believe her, but it hurts too much.)

Seeing her and Francis is burned into his memory. He knows that was the point his father was trying to make. Henry made it very clear that Mary was never his to start with and he should never have agreed to go along with it. (He finds that more than a little ironic since Henry was the one who went to Rome to speak to the pope about legitimizing him to start with.)

He spends the time Francis and Mary are gone seething in the woods. He finds himself at an impasse – he cannot go back to the castle without fear of his father putting him to death for things that are not his fault but he cannot just _leave_. He knows he should go. He will never find peace so long as he is at the castle.

Sometimes he imagines what it would be like if he did leave. Other times he imagines what it would be like if Mary had never come back to French court. And sometimes, though he will never admit it to himself, he wonders what it would have been like if they had gone through with their marriage instead of her and Francis. He knows better and he knows that nothing can ever happen between them now. Henry Tudor already opened Pandora's box on that matter and Bash knows how badly that turned out. He knows better than to go there himself.

In those same moments he thinks he deserves what he has gotten – he is a bastard who tried to take power. He _knew_ better.

It all goes back to Mary and he hates it. He hates that she has become the center of his world and that he will do anything to protect her even though she is married to his brother and he _cannot_ have these feelings for her. He is at war with himself constantly because of her. He loves Mary but she is forbidden to him now. He knows that. It is impossible to forget.

He also knows that he cannot just stop caring about her. He curses himself for that. It would save him a lot of time and pain if he could just let her go and he knows that, too.

When he discovers the Darkness and all that it entails, he thinks that he might finally be able to let her go. (He even wonders if he might be able to find peace with Rowan, however short-lived that turns out to be.) He might have something else to live for. He might be able to finally burn the memories of her lips against his and the feel of her in his arms. He tries. God help him, he _tries_.

In the end he knows that he must return to the castle if he wants to have any chance at finding the Darkness and putting an end to the terror it and the blood cult have wrought in the surrounding villages. There is no other way.

He is greeted by nothing but his father and his brother's collective anger. He is not surprised at all.

As the guards drag him away, he truly sees how much everything has changed. A year ago he was his father's favorite son, bastard born or not. He had his father's favor and he had such freedom.

The chains weigh him down. He has been confined to the dungeons more than once in the last year and twice on his father's orders. He knows all too well that there will come a point when Henry will tire of dealing with his troublesome bastard son and that will be the end of him.

He wishes that it was a year ago and everything was simpler. He finds that he regrets getting involved more than anything. As time slips away and he begins to anticipate his father's plans, his heart only sinks.

He has risen and fallen and he cannot go back to where he started. Not when he reached for the crown. (He only wanted the woman that went with it, but that does not change anything.)


End file.
